Today was an interesting day. It's that old story, for want of a nail....

Currently I'm playing a nice little combat game called Battle Bay and I seem to have inherited a guild.

Once you have clearly understood that I am now the leader of a motley cohort of captains battling our way through the bay there's something else which is vital for you to know.

I'm the most antisocial guy you're every likely to meet online.

Honestly, I suspect that's a generational thing. I just tend to not be very impressed with the behavior of other gamers and prefer to go it alone. I could've invented the line, The only thing wrong with massively multiplayer games is all those other players.

Anyway, how does all this lead up to phpBB? As I said, I inherited this guild and I'm not exactly a skilled guild leader. But it did occur to me that if I had a way to discuss things with the people in my guild that might help. Yes, the in-game guild communication tools are somewhere between poor and non-existent. If only my guild had a web site...

So a bit of fussing around with graphics design and I had the basics to throw together a quick Joomla / K2 site. But the original problem was not just to have some sort of guild blog. I wanted to discuss things with my fellow guild members and that means a discussion board. I looked into some of the joomla components which provide this functionality but they simply don't compare to the grand daddy of open source boards, phpBB. Right out of the box the system offers pretty much everything a person is used to when going to any board anywhere. I added a few extensions (of which there's a credible variety) but they were hardly necessary. One provides a hover preview when hovering over a thread title. Another is supposed provide a handy option for external linking of images to Imgur but so far, love getting that to work.

By far most of my work has been on the design side and template customization. phpBB uses a new technology to me, CSS pre-processing. Basically, you write in a meta-CSS language and run it through the pre-processor which does a ton of magical things... most of which I'm just slowly coming to understand. A handy tool called Prepros does this for me on my windows desktop. Other customizations are handled in what the system calls "html" files but are also some sort of meta-language. In the end, I got something which has consistent look and feel. It's early days and the design is rough but there's a board up with custom graphics and template and most importantly, I have my first question posed to my guild members in a poll!

If you want to make your business stand out more, it all starts with a logo and business card that... well... stands out. That's a great reason to avoid clipart designs from the internet and give PixelSplash a call.

I listened to this customer's business name and description and came up with a more modern "tree of life" design.

This customer wanted a professional, high-end look and feel to her fine art business.

A friend of a friend of a friend. Or in this case, a friend of Deborah's who is a friend of my wife's.

Like many artists, John's web site hadn't been updated in far too long. Unlike many artists, in his case the web site was static rather than being created in a content management system like Joomla. That meant that any changes whatsoever required a web designer to do.

Do you need a web site to help support your business or hobby? If so, then you should know that each PixelSplash web site is loving crafted by hand not from a cookie cutter template. That means both the design and functionality are designed to support your needs.

Our web sites are fully responsive, rendering on everything from a smart phone to a big screen TV. A user's manual is included to ensure that you can maintain the content on your site.

We provide affordable support for whatever ails your home or office computer systems. What makes us different?

Unlike many of our competitors, Jeff has spent more than three decades in the information technology field and has worked for corporations ranging from IBM to Intel.

You can bring your computer to us or Jeff can visit you in your home or office.

All work is guaranteed. If, at any time, you feel that you have not received your money's worth, it's as simple as calling us back to fix whatever is wrong or simply requesting a refund. If you aren't happy then we haven't done our job and we don't want your money. It's just that simple.

If it seems like I can help you, then we will make arrangements either for you to drop off your computer or for me to come to your location. Note: In some cases, problems can be solved over the phone.

After the work is complete, you pay the bill if you are happy.

Whatever your problem is, we can probably fix it. Is your computer too slow? Is your network not behaving correctly? Does your new printer not want to print or scan? Or, perhaps, you just have some questions and you'd like to ask a geek.

Time is billed in 10 minute increments. A quick phone call can be as low as $6.50.Driving time is billed at normal work rates. No mileage is added.